Darkelve Posted April 26, 2004 Report Share Posted April 26, 2004 Hey board, I'm kind of done distro-hopping, it's time that I actually start using my computer for something productive ;) I tried and hopped and burnt and tested... but I think I'll finally settle on SuSe 9.1. Don't get me wrong, Mandrake 10 is wonderful, but I can't get my wireless network set up for it, at least not the way I could with all Debian-based distros and with SuSe. Plus I think it holds a lot of good things of its own: applications included, automatic warning of updates (SuSe watcher), I nice control panel&Yast, RPM-based, KDE as a primary choice for the desktop... I would like to customize it a bit however (wallpaper, window decoration etc.), but I guess that wouldn't be much of a problem. I'd only need to do some simple things to make it more to my liking, e.g. install Moz. Firebird(and/or Opera)&Thunderbird for my browser, maybe acme for my multimedia keys, change my desktop look like I said and set up a simple firewall. I'd use it mostly for Browsing, E-mail, chat (MSN network kind of obligatory... :( ), Personal Finance management, Office tasks etc. simple stuff like that. I was thinking about getting WineX since I'm content enough with only a few games (although Morrowind is a must-have), but perhaps I can just dual-boot and disable all network interfaces in Windows (will that REALLY shut off all network connectivity, e.g. also 'calling home' and such?). The dual-boot is probably still the safest option I guess... I think SuSe 9.1 Personal would already suit all my needs, or should I really dig out a little more for 9.1 professional? I don't really need stuff like web server etc. for the moment. It would be nice to be able to do programming in it, since I've started to learn C. But I guess it wouldn't be so hard to install KDevelop. Or erhaps gcc alone is enough for those simple apps you make when starting to learn C. I don't think it should give a lot of problems, but I'm just curious about your experiences. SuSe 9.1 will be in shops here on thursday 29 of april. Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mousematt Posted April 26, 2004 Report Share Posted April 26, 2004 the Personal version is missing almost everything including GCC - so if you ever need to compile something, you'll need to download the development tools first. If you don't need the printed manuals: buy the Upgrade edition of the Pro Pack. You get the same CDs but no manuals. It's the same otherwise. I've tried SUSE 8.2 for a while... and came crawling back to Mandrake. SUSE binaries are not as plentiful although SUSE does have some great innovations. I'll prolly look again for version 10 or 9.2 - whichever one has been Ximianised and infected by Novell. 9.1 by all reports is the last of the old German developed SuSE releases. It does look spiffy... just buy the pro upgrade rather than the personal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted April 26, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 26, 2004 (edited) But surely one could find a SUSE RPM for Kdevelop, a very popular application and install it like that. And I think when Kdevelop is installed, you automatically have GCC installed, not? I don't think I will need to install a lot of extra stuff, but when I do, I'm prepared to e.g. learn to install from source. Although I'd rather not have to deal with it. Still, if it's the only way to get an app running. SuSe 9.1 Personal is very well priced also... but it still is a fully functional distro, is it not? What exactly would I be missing compared to the Pro version?? Edited April 27, 2004 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mousematt Posted April 27, 2004 Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 SuSe 9.1 Personal is very well priced also... but it still is a fully functional distro, is it not? What exactly would I be missing compared to the Pro version?? At a glance: GCC and all of the devel.rpms for every app on the personal CD. No server applications at all: ie. samba client but not samba-server. No GNOME desktop at all: but enough GTK to run GIMP and Evolution. If you want the full list I'd suggest you check out SUSE's site... They do break it down. If I were you: and I wanted to buy SUSE: I'd go for the Pro Upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted April 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 (edited) Well, I checked the SuSe website again; they have updated their pages for 9.1, I think I'm going for the pro version anyway. Too many stuff in there I will probably run into using later on anyway... price is not an all-or nothing factor, only 'personal' does have a home-user ring to it and it is considerably cheaper. But after comparing the two I think for me personally, the Pro edition is probably best. I'll probably end up installing all this extra stuff myself otherwise, possibly breaking things in between :o I do like printed documentation however, and I read it's quite good too. Anyway, I'm glad I informed here first because otherwise perhaps I'd have bought something that didn't fully meet my requirements... the first step for that, of course, is to define what your requirements are... Edited April 27, 2004 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arthur Posted April 27, 2004 Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 for some reason kernel 2.6 and KDE 3.2 are only advertised on Professional...I'm not sure, but anyway let us know how it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sitor Posted April 27, 2004 Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 Darkelve, Read in a review that SUSE 9.1 was not too well equiped regarding Multimedia software. But it seemed to me that the reviewer used Linux for the first time, and did not even try to install anything that was not yet on the CDs. Could you let us know if multimedia is indeed a problem or that you can add it as easily as with Mandrake? Ciao, Sitor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted April 27, 2004 Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 SUSE is a good all around distro and I would recommend it to most people. Has plenty of multimedia stuff and anything the cd's might not have the /ftp will. Go there for more SUSE links and 3rd party rpm's http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted April 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 Hey board! I am probably going to buy the professional, so anything I say might not be applicibal to 9.1 personal (I do seem to remember had kernel 2.6 and kde 3.2 also though...). I'll let you know my experiences when I get it! This might be the day/week when I finally start really 'using' Linux instead of 'just toying' with it. Or it might not. Anyhow, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted April 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 SUSE is a good all around distro and I would recommend it to most people. Has plenty of multimedia stuff and anything the cd's might not have the /ftp will. Go there for more SUSE links and 3rd party rpm's http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suse Only thing I am still concerned about is getting DVD playback to work and getting certain codecs installed. Shouldn't be too much of a problem I guess. If it is, somebody better warn me quick! :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pain999 Posted April 27, 2004 Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 I have not tried Suse, but from looking at the packaging it looks pretty much like Mandrake that they charge you a pretty penny for and there is not nearly as much forum support for Suse. I am sure it is a fine distro but I don't get what advantage it is personally going to do for me other than lighten my wallet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted April 27, 2004 Report Share Posted April 27, 2004 You can get the codes and DVD working, most stuff for that will be available from pacmans site http://packman.links2linux.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted April 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 (edited) You can get the codes and DVD working, most stuff for that will be available from pacmans site http://packman.links2linux.org/ Heh: http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=122 Now, the new copyright in germany is coming into force, it's no longer allowed to provide tools to breake technical protections. Therefore we can no longer provide libdvdcss, sorry. ... then some text about getting it from videolan and how instructions to install it. Should work, but WAY less straightforward than just clicking on an RPM. Edited April 28, 2004 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bam Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 You can get the codes and DVD working, most stuff for that will be available from pacmans site http://packman.links2linux.org/ Heh: http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=122 Now, the new copyright in germany is coming into force, it's no longer allowed to provide tools to breake technical protections. Therefore we can no longer provide libdvdcss, sorry. ... then some text about getting it from videolan and how instructions to install it. Should work, but WAY less straightforward than just clicking on an RPM. I've used those instructions to enable DVD playback on my SUSE 9.0 box... They are pretty straightforward. Followed the directions and DVD playback worked just as well as it did when I was running MDK with the PLF libdvdcss RPM. It's just adds one extra step to build the RPM from the source rpm.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted April 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 (edited) Thanks Bam between the SuSe website, the comments on this board and the excellent reviews on MadPenguin (how could I have forgotten!), I found all answers I wanted. http://www.madpenguin.org/Article1131.html http://www.madpenguin.org/Article1226.html Except for this one: In WinXP, if you disable ALL network interfaces, will it STILL be able to make a connection to the net, or not? I am asking this since I do not want to use WinXP for network related tasks any longer. But I will keep it around for e.g. games and certain apps. Darkelve Edited April 28, 2004 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.